Climate change as a ballot question could make this year’s federal election in Canada “the most important of our lives,” writes Gideon Forman, climate policy analyst for the David Suzuki Foundation, in a post for the Ottawa Citizen.
“Every ballot contest matters, but the consequences of getting it wrong in October would be devastating—at least where climate change is concerned,” Forman states. “Our top priority in the remaining months of 2019 should be putting climate protection on all parties’ platforms.”
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A quick look at the Canadian scene for climate politics underscores the urgency.
Despite last year’s landmark IPCC report laying out a 12-year deadline to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 45%, “climate action is losing ground—in Ontario, of course, but also in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and, quite likely this spring, Alberta. Federal policies that ignore global warming could make an already worrying situation far worse,” he writes.
“We mustn’t erect new barriers to the widespread adoption of renewables. We can’t afford to expand fossil fuel infrastructure. And goodness knows we shouldn’t pull out of the Paris Agreement, precisely when international climate accords need to be strengthened. But these possibilities could become reality this fall.”
Forman doesn’t dispute the need for a deeper cultural shift that would in turn change the narrative at election time. “But if we win strong climate policy, we’ll be better positioned to bring the broad cultural shift into being.” Those policies “would include a price on carbon pollution, robust support for wind and solar power, generous funding for public transit, and continued commitment to the national coal phaseout.”
And as their effects played out, citizens at large “might see that climate initiatives bring personal benefits (such as fewer asthma attacks), and this could spark their openness to other changes (like leaving the car at home or eating less meat) that also foster health. Thus could begin the path to systemic change.”
But the first step down that road begins at the ballot box, Forman concludes. “Let’s act honourably on the most pressing issue of our day while we still have time.”
I completely agree that Climate Breakdown should be a key electoral issue in 2019. But why would the climate policy analyst of the Suzuki Foundation include only coal phaseout, and omit any mention of the critical need for an oil and gas industry phaseout? Climate science is completely clear that ALL fossil fuels must undergo a rapid managed decline to avoid even worse climate breakdown than we are now experiencing.
Could this omission be motivated by fear of a public backlash when ‘our precious’ Canadian Oil Sands are threatened with phasedown? Could this omission be due to a lack of knowledge by Mr Forman? Why would the highly credible Suzuki Foundation not use its influence to inform a public that has been misled for decades by Big Oil, its captured regulators and provincial and federal governments?
There are now three excellent books documenting the decades long influence of Big Oil on provincial and federal governments, and the corporate media to minimize, distract and misinform the public, while receiving enormous subsidies from taxpayers.
Kevin Taft’s “Oil’s Deep State”;“The Big Stall: How Big Oil and Think Tanks are blocking action on Climate Change in Canada” by Donald Gutstein and “the Costly Fix: Power, Politics and Nature in the Tar Sands” by Ian Urquhart provide an excellent resource for understanding how the Industry and Governments have misled the public into believing we can still keep extracting tar Sands ‘in the National interest’.
Canada is ‘ramping up’ both oil and gas extraction, building pipelines and LNG Infrastructure and still subsidizing this sunset industry. Why won’t the Suzuki Foundation stand up and speak up? It just doesn’t seem right that this highly respected and trusted Foundation would withhold this vital information from an already misinformed public.